The present invention relates to a tooth adapter and a bucket.
A bucket for a hydraulic excavator, wheel loader, or the like has teeth disposed on the edge of its opening. As a way of disposing the teeth on a bucket, tooth adapters are used. The tooth adapters are joined to the edge of the bucket opening by welding or other method. A tooth is held by a tooth adapter in the state where a pan of the tooth adapter is inserted in a cavity formed in the tooth.
When this structure is adopted, sand and other materials will penetrate in between the teeth and the tooth adapters and abrade the tooth adapters. The wearing down of a tooth adapter causes looseness between the tooth adapter and the corresponding tooth, which may even cause cracking of the tooth adapter.
To address such wear of the tooth adapters, it has been proposed to insert a clearance adjuster between a tooth and a tooth adapter (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-105609 (Patent Literature 1)).
With the approach disclosed in Patent Literature 1, the number of parts increases, and high dimensional accuracy is needed for each part. This may lead to an increased production cost and difficulty in working.
Another approach would be to increase the hardness of the tooth adapter to improve the wear resistance. The increased hardness of the tooth adapter, however, results in a decreased toughness thereof, in which case the tooth adapter may become even more susceptible to cracking.